A Far cry from Africa By Derek Walcott -Background of the poem

A Far Cry from Africa 

 By Derek Walcott

Background of the poem: -

 This poem was published in 1962. In this poem, the poet tells his own painful story of  Kenya in the 1950s. At that time Kenya was a British colony and the Kenyan people were tortured by the Britishers. The poet Derek Walcott was of mixed racial ancestry. His grandfather was White and his grandmother was Black.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the first white settlers arrived in the Kikuyu tribe region and tried to remove the Kikuyu tribe from Their Cand. The Kikuyu people opposed this and some of the Kikuyu people formed a mau mau organization. In this poem, the poet faces a dilemma that whose side he should take black or white. The reason was the poet belonged to both Africa and Europe as his ancestry was mixed and at the time when he composed this poem, his birthplace was the Island of  Saint Lucia still a colony of Great Britain.

 On the other hand, the poet opposes colonialism and is sympathetic towards the revolution going on for anti-colonial causes, on the other hand, he has passionate reservations about the Mau Mau uprising as they had become too inhuman to animals and whites.
Through this poem, the poet ironically deals with how he disapproved of British culture and colonial ideology. This poem belongs to post-colonial poetry and mainly points out the incidents of Mau Mau's uprising revolution in Kenya that began during the decades of 1950s. It was a bloody battle fought between the two whits and Kikuyu.

In Kenya, the Kikuyu were the biggest & and most well-educated tribe. As the Britishers were attracted to the land of the Kikuyu tribe, they reacted against them and started a revolution.

This poem begins with the heart-wrenching bitter experience of the revolution that altered the peaceful environment of the country. The beginning over lines of the poem depicts the bloody battle between the British and Kikuyu. The nation compared with animals. The Kikuyu tribe has been compared with Flies who feed themselves on the blood. Before the revolution, the nation was just like heaven but due to war the poet ironically makes a comment saying that it caused a lot of deaths, inhumanity, and destruction.